#132: Mike King – Music Marketing

In this episode of the DIY Musician Podcast, Kevin interviews Mike King, instructor and CMO of the Berklee Online school of music. Mike has written and teaches four courses for Berklee Online: Online Music Marketing with Topspin; Music Marketing 101; Online Music Marketing: Campaign Strategies, Social Media, and Digital Distribution; and Music Business Trends and Strategies. He’s also author of Music Marketing: Press, Promotion, Distribution, and Retail (published by Berklee Press in 2009).

Mike King has worn many hats over the course of career, from intern at Ryko Disc to running the largest online music school in the US. Mike discusses how the music business has changed over the years, what challenges musicians face today, and what marketing techniques work and which don’t.

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Great interview with some good info. There was a bit of a glossing over the ‘awareness’ factor and how Mike recommends that new artists generate that. No podcast has really taken the point of view from a new artist with no fans – how do you get enough fans to start applying all of the insights from these podcasts? There is a bit of a catch 22 for new artists: no one knows about your music so gigs and CDs/downloads are out of the question.

You can’t get meaningful gigs without fans and without gigs you aren’t making new fans to warrant more gigs. Without fans you can’t really justify spending the cash to get CD’s printed up that will not get sold at your non-gigs, or to have your tunes languish in the dark corners of iTunes never to be heard. Places like Sound Cloud are great for musicians to listen to other musicians, but that isn’t really a site for finding the kind of fans that will buy CDs or downloads. There is YouTube, if I want to add becoming a video producer to my overwhelmed list of things to do. With all the possibilities of the internet, what are the top proven methods to go from no fans to an active fan base (irregardless of genre)? The kind of info that I would find useful is case studies of specific artists. X amount of time spend doing A,B, & C led to D, which opened a door to E and F. How much money and time is spent to get what sort of results? Yes, I know that this will vary according to many variables, but specifics will help a lot more than just general discussion, IMHO.